A clean hydroelectric dam sounds pretty promising. Hopefully it would provide 1,100 megawatts of capacity and produce about 5,100 gigawatt hours of electricity each year, enough to power 450,000 homes in B.C. Unfortunately, it comes with a price.

Site C Clean Energy project is planned to be constructed along the Peace River of northern British Columbia. It is predicted that the dam would flood 83 kilometers of the Peace River Valley. Farmland, wildlife habitat, and archaeological sites in the area would be destroyed. Furthermore, these lands have been homes to the First Nation people for hundreds of years. Constructing a dam would affect their livings and change their ways of life.

In my opinion, the dam’s benefits outweigh the negative ones. The project would not only provide cheaper hydroelectricity for the nearby gas, oil, and mining industries, but it would also create thousands of jobs for both natives and non-natives. These are some of the positive externalities that the dam would bring to the region. However, it is also a threat to many agricultural and fisheries related industry. The destruction of forests and water habitat would cause these businesses to produce less and therefore lose profits or even get shut down.

I feel like the Native people are being taken advantage of. If the dam is going to be proceeded, government should provide them with some compensation such as building them new permanent residences and providing subsidies. B.C.’s population is growing and a renewable source of energy will be very needed in the future. I think that Site C can indeed be a win-win situation.

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/First+Nation+chiefs+stage+Site+showdown/10215965/story.html#ixzz3FQZzcPfw

https://www.sitecproject.com

Link to Izabella Shalygina’s blog:

e-cigarettes: for and against

Izabella’s blog has inspired me to look up more on electronic cigarettes. Tobacco addiction has long been our world’s major problem. People who smoke are risking themselves everyday with many negative health impacts such as stroke, heart disease, and lung cancer. As a result, a new market for electronic cigarettes began to emerge hoping to target all the current and potential smokers.

Euromonitor estimated that the retail sales value of e-cigs was around $2.5 billion worldwide for 2013. By 2017, Bloomberg Industries predict that sales will exceed $10 billion and by 2047, it will surpass traditional cigarettes. The popularity of these devices lies in the younger generation because they come with different flavours like chocolate, strawberry or caramel. They are so varied that consumers can even choose to customize their own nicotine level. For example, people who try to switch from traditional cigarettes to e-cigs can choose to start with higher level of nicotine and eventually buy ones that are nicotine-free.

I disagree with Isabella that “e-cigs are just smokers’ toys”. I think that if people are capable of following their customized schedule, (eg. lowering nicotine level every week) they can actually use these vaporizers as a tool to help them quit. In addition, e-cigs smokers are not exposed to the burning paper in which they would inhale if they smoke the traditional cigarettes. This mean that they have lower risk of getting lung cancer  because there is no CO2 emitted. E-cigs are good in the long run because it doesn’t produce any harmful effects to the third party. Even though they are not the best solution, I think it is definitely an alternative that we should reconsider.

Source:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/agoodman/2013/12/05/e-cigarettes-are-smoking-hot-4-ways-to-approach-them/

On September 24 2014, Blackberry Passport was sold out within 6 hours of its release and within 10 hours on Amazon’s. Apparently, 200,000 orders are still on pending.

Not long ago, Blackberry limited was still a dead company. Its revenue was on decline and had never climbed back up since Apple and Samsung have released their smartphones. John Chen, the new CEO, stepped up just in time to flip the company around. Blackberry Passport is indeed his trump card.

With the former CEO, Blackberry had no clear generic strategy. It tried to capture a broad range of customers but possessed neither cost leadership nor product differentiation. As for the Passport, Blackberry chooses to focus only people in the business realm. The new model is replaced with a bigger screen so that customers can easily view emails, messages, and even work with the spreadsheet. A physical touchscreen keyboard panel attached at the bottom is said to reduce the typing time and typos by 74%. Other specs include a 2.2 GHz quad-core processor and 3GB of RAM. With these new transformations, the cost only starts at $599 which is still a lot cheaper than Samsung galaxy and iPhone.

By using the focus strategy, I think Blackberry is heading towards the right direction. Even though its market might be narrower, it will get a high degree of customer loyalty. Knowing this, Blackberry will then be able to charge its loyal customers with a higher price in the future. It’s quite interesting to see concepts learned in class being used in real world situation.